Tuesday, April 28, 2015

This project was inspired by a friend's recent amazing trip to Macchu Picchu.

Truly a bucket list moment!

Since the chances of me making the trek there anytime soon are nonexistent, the consolation prize was to do an art lesson based on the Peruvian llamas. There are over 7 million llamas in South America. They are highly intelligent animals that are easily trained. They are raised for their wool, to carry loads and pull carts. And since they are in the camel family, they can survive weeks without water.

Jackie said this photo-bombing llama's name was Lucy

and a group of 30 of them live there year round to keep the grass down.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Sometimes the evolution of an art lesson is a bit like the game of telephone. It starts out as one thing, and ends up something completely different. These sweet Chickadee illustrations from artist, Carolyn Gavin caught my eye. I decided to create a lesson loosely based around them for my Draw, Paint, Collage group. I ordered some color diffusing paper and have been itching to put it to use. I wanted my young students (ages 5-7) to have a lot of elements to play with: pattern drawn birds with marker, cut and painted branches and leaves and pencil eraser prints for berries. It had a little bit of everything and they all seemed to enjoy creating their spring bird pieces (even though they bare no resemblance to their original source of inspiration).

Friday, April 10, 2015

My new Draw, Paint, Collage classes are working on some very large mixed media cityscape pieces inspired by the art of Ezra Jack Keats (a real favorite of mine), Romare Bearden and even a little Basquiat. You'd never know it by the amount of animal based projects I do, but I Love cityscape art. The more expressive, the better. So I experimented with a variety of media and techniques and came up with this project. The kids started out choosing a well worn placemat full of paint and even doodles.

They choose a few analogous colors and white to sponge paint lightly over their poster board, leaving paint and doodles showing through. The next layer was a black city silhouette started with Sharpie and then painted in with acrylic. Once dry, ends of pencil erasers were used to make colorful prints for city lights. Next, I had the children use sponge brushes to paint over a sheet of newspaper, encouraging them to leave some words and pictures showing through. Pieces of cardboard were then used to print out building shapes and sponges were used to print colorful lit or dark windows. Once dry, they glued down some logos cut from magazines. And as if this wasn't enough (a less is more art lesson, this is not), I had them create reflected city lights using oil pastels, which they painted over with blue watercolor to create a waterfront city. Collage pieces were cut out and glued in layers with some help from Miss Mary. They are wild and expressive - just my thing!

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About Mary

Thanks for stopping by MaryMaking! I'm a SCAD grad with a B.F.A. in Graphic Design. I've worked in advertising and as a fine artist. I decided to combine two of my biggest loves, art and kids, and began teaching private art classes. I Love helping children create beautiful artwork! This blog has been a great way to exchange ideas with other art educators and share student art.